3D scattering center extraction from Xpatch

Xpatch is a general-purpose, high-frequency electromagnetic prediction code based on the shooting and bouncing ray (SBR) technique. In this paper we present a methodology to extract 3D scattering center information of a complex target using Xpatch. The 3D scattering center description of a target is useful in a number of applications. For instance, it is a useful abstraction for data compression. By storing compact scattering center information from Xpatch simulations, range profiles and inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imagery can be reconstructed in real time, alleviating the need for the storage of large data sets. Also, by extracting the 3D scattering centers, the behavior of individual scattering centers can be tracked as a function of angle. The angular variability of scattering centers is important for target identification applications.